1.10 Asking the right questions
We have discussed the importance of involving the community in developing the research goal, but how do you ask the questions to elicit their involvement? The video features Dr Maha Shuayb, Centre for Lebanese Studies, Lebanese University of Beirut, Zeina Amro, Doctoral Researcher, Kings College London and Ben Anderson, UCL Institute of Prosperity.
In the video, the three researchers discuss how they work with the community, so that they can listen to the different concerns and issues they have.
- Maha talks about finding the right balance between being broad enough to be interesting, and specific enough to be feasible.
- Zaina describes how they set about listening to the community, to follow their concerns rather than the researcher’s initial idea.
- Ben had some delicate questions to pose, and had to find the right way to ask them.
The research project must address the community’s own concerns if it is to make an impact. You have an idea of an important issue, but then you must ask questions around that topic, so that you hear how the community members think about it. Their understanding of your idea may be more complex than you expect, as this article shows.
Reading
Read the article ‘Community and Prosperity’ in downloads. This is a series of extracts from a journal paper published by colleagues in the RELIEF Centre. It is valuable because it gives you a sense of their interviewees’ own reflections on the research question: ‘What is a community?’ and how they used this data to generate conclusions that could influence policy. The full article is also available in the download.
The extract of the Renders and Knezevic article you downloaded in Step 1.2. is also relevant here.
Given that you have identified an issue or concern, how do you find out more from the community? We have heard what the researchers say in the video, and you have the case example of the research paper. What are the characteristics of good interview questions? Add them to your Research Notebook as you come across good ideas on this.
Over to you
In the forum, Please comment on your reflections on the characteristics of good interview questions.
Read other participants’ responses and ‘Like’ those you agree with. And reply to at least two, to explain why you agree or disagree with what they have suggested.
Let’s see if we can make a good list of characteristics of good interview questions we can use next week, as we develop the questions for interviews.